• Home
  • Mission
  • Federalist Papers
  • Foundation
  • U.S. Constitution
  • Bill of Rights

Federalist Press | Defending Liberty — Informing America

Breaking News and Political Commentary

  • All Stories
  • Economy
  • Elections
  • Entitlement
  • Ethics
  • Foreign
  • Gender
  • Religion
  • Sci-Tech

Diogo Morgado, Jesus in History’s ‘The Bible,’ Calls Obama Controversy ‘Hilarious’

March 25, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

the_bible_jesusThe Portuguese star defends the physical similarity between the actor who plays Satan and the president of the United States.

Although History raised eyebrows for the controversial casting of a President Obama-esque Satan in The Bible mini-series, the actor who plays Jesus calls the situation “hilarious.”

“I don’t think that’s controversial at all, I think that’s so funny,” Diogo Morgado told The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s just funny.”

Mohamen Mehdi Ouazanni, who plays the devil, “did a nice job and it was awesome and never — not even for one second — were we even thinking about that, so I think it’s hilarious,” said Morgado. “At the same time, I think it’s just a sign of how successful the show is” because people are paying attention to “silly things.”

Before Sunday’s installment of The Bible, Ouazanni’s resemblance to Obama was first observed on Twitter by Glenn Beck, instantly sparking headlines about the striking physical similarity between the two.

PHOTO: In History’s ‘The Bible,’ Satan Looks Like President Obama

“This is utter nonsense,” executive producers Mark Burnett and Roma Downey said Monday in a statement, noting that Quazanni “is a highly acclaimed Moroccan actor. He has previously played parts in several biblical epics — including Satanic characters long before Barack Obama was elected as our president.”

The husband-and-wife pair stepped out alongside Morgado on Tuesday night for the opening-night gala for The Bible Experience, an exhibit in downtown Manhattan featuring photography from the mini-series as well as biblical artifacts by way of the Vatican and a giant, two-ton crown of thorns hanging from the ceiling. A spooky Old World ambiance was enhanced by dim lighting, a fog machine and Hans Zimmer‘s musical score in the background as guests wandered through a cavernous space built to seem centuries-old with earthy walls and barely any heat circulating.

“This is a gift to New York City,” mused Burnett of the week-long event, a half-museum/half-marketing gimmick. “I bet [people] would come from California to see this this week. People are gonna come from Canada to see parts of the Dead Sea scrolls.”

When asked about the Obama/Satan flap, the veteran reality TV mogul reiterated that Ouazanni was not cast for his Obama-like visage.

“It’s all about the light,” emphasized Burnett. “Can you ask everyone to tweet Jesus? Because we want everyone to spread the light!”

By Erin Carlson

Filed Under: All Stories, Foreign, Religion

Actor Diogo Morgado Portrays Jesus in ‘The Bible’

March 25, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

diogo-morgadoPortuguese actor Diogo Morgado, who plays Jesus in the highly-popular “The Bible” miniseries, recently responded to the recent “Hot Jesus” nickname given to him on social media platforms, saying that although he is flattered, he would prefer to affect someone on a spiritual level.

“I take the [Hot Jesus] nickname as a compliment obviously, but I’m waiting for the good stuff, and the good stuff for me is if someone just nabbed me on the shoulder and said ‘look you did a pretty good job,'” Morgado said in a recent interview with USA Today.

“Something like this more than anything, something like playing Jesus, for me, if only I can have one person go straight to me and say ‘you touched me, and you brought me something I thought I’d lost,’ that would be my best compliment,” Morgado added.

The Portuguese actor’s portrayal of Jesus on the History Channel’s “The Bible” miniseries sparked a wave of Twitter comments with the trending hashtag “HotJesus,” referring to Morgado’s good looks.

The actor, who in spite of his 16 years in television and film was virtually unknown outside of Portugal before his role as Jesus, went on to tell USA Today that he hopes his portrayal of Jesus will bring hope to those living in these “confused times.”

“I think we’re living really confused times. You turn on the news and there’s a lot of violence, but it’s not just violence, it’s getting to the insane point of violence when you don’t have any reasonable explanation for stuff that is happening nowadays. It’s getting to a point that it’s alarming,” Morgado said.

“I think people are just needing for something positive, something that can touch them in a way that can bring them some hope.”

This isn’t the first time Morgado has been complimented for his good looks.

British actor Darwin Shaw, who plays the character of Peter in “The Bible” miniseries, told The Christian Post in a previous interview that along with being a kind person, Morgado is also “incredibly handsome.”

“Diogo is one of the most generous, compassionate and kind actors I have ever met – he’s also incredibly handsome. He’s a great guy. To work with him was a privilege because once we were together, there was already a real chemistry, a real brotherhood, and I hope that is something that comes across on camera,” Shaw told CP.

“The Bible” miniseries, which is produced by Mark Burnett of “Survivor” fame and his wife, Roma Downey from “Touched By An Angel,” has received continuous, record-breaking ratings since its debut on March 3, making it the most watched program in all of television on Sunday nights.

The show will conclude on March 31, Easter Sunday, with a two-hour episode featuring Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.

“The Bible” airs on the History Channel at 8 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday.

By Katherine Weber , Christian Post Reporter

Filed Under: All Stories, Foreign, Religion

US Pastor Imprisoned in Iran Abondoned by Obama

March 22, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

Saeed Abedini is seen with his family.The American pastor imprisoned in Iran, in a vivid letter to his wife, described how he was beaten to the point where parts of his face were “swollen three times what they should have been” and was denied medical treatment because he was seen as an “unclean” Christian.

The letter was received by Saeed Abedini’s family this week, though it may have been written weeks ago. The new details come as his family, the attorneys representing them, and several Capitol Hill lawmakers urge the Obama administration to exert more pressure on Iran to release the pastor.In a sign of movement, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Council on Thursday directly called for Abedini’s release during a meeting in Geneva, which an attorney for the family called the “first pro-active statement by … our administration” in the case.

The letter from Saeed Abedini to his wife Naghmeh described in detail how he’s been mistreated at Iran’s notorious Evin Prison. He described how he saw his face for the first time in the mirror of an elevator.

“I said hi to the person staring back at me because I did not recognize myself,” Abedini wrote. “My hair was shaven, under my eyes were swollen three times what they should have been, my face was swollen, and my beard had grown.”

The pastor explained how, despite his situation, he is trying to focus on “forgiveness.” He said he forgave the “interrogator who beat me” as well as the doctor who “did not give me the medication that I needed.”

Abedini wrote that a nurse would not provide him with treatment because she said “in our religion we are not suppose to touch you, you are unclean.” He wrote that he could not fall to sleep one night because of the pain, as he listened to the sound of “dirty sewer rats with their loud noises and screeches.”

Attorney Jordan Sekulow, though, told Fox News on Friday that he has since received a medical review. Sekulow said Abedini was promised he’d be moved to a hospital outside the prison, though cautioned that the family would have to see that happen to believe it.

Sekulow, meanwhile, drew attention to a statement delivered Thursday in Geneva by Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe, the U.S. representative on the U.N. Human Rights Council.

She said: “Iranian officials continue to restrict these communities’ freedom to practice their religious beliefs free from harassment, threat, or intimidation. Christian pastor Saeed Abedini’s continuing harsh treatment at the hands of Iranian authorities exemplifies this trend.

“We repeat our call for the Government of Iran to release Mr. Abedini, and others who are unjustly imprisoned, and to cease immediately its persecution of all religious minority communities. The United States also repeats its call for the Government of Iran to provide without delay the urgent medical attention Mr. Abedini needs.”

Donahoe came under criticism for neglecting to specifically address the case at a recent meeting in Geneva on Iran’s human rights record. Donahoe instead broadly criticized “the Iranian government’s ceaseless campaign of abuse” against those who dissent. Administration officials had discussed Abedini’s case in public before, but only when questioned about it by reporters and others.

The State Department also declined to provide a witness to testify last week during a Capitol Hill hearing where Naghmeh Abedini spoke.

Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., and other lawmakers expressed disappointment at the State Department’s absence. In a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry earlier this week, Wolf and other lawmakers urged him “in the strongest possible terms, to make this case and the broader issue of religious freedom a priority as Secretary of State.”

The wife and her attorneys did meet with State Department officials following last Friday’s hearing in Washington.

Abedini has been held in Iran’s Evin Prison since September of last year and was sentenced to eight years in prison in January — accused of evangelizing and threatening national security.

Naghmeh Abedini met Saeed in 2002 and they married two years later. Both had converted from Islam to Christianity — Saeed became a U.S. citizen in 2010.

The Iranian government does not recognize his American citizenship, though it had enabled him to travel freely between both countries until this past summer, when he was pulled off a bus and placed under house arrest, according to his supporters.

Published March 22, 2013 / FoxNews.com

Filed Under: All Stories, Elections, Ethics, Foreign, Religion

Paris, Europe, an Islamic Stronghold

March 21, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

Friday in Paris. A hidden camera shows streets blocked by huge crowds of Muslim worshippers and enforced by a private security force.

This is all illegal in France: the public worship, the blocked streets, and the private security. But the police have been ordered not to intervene.

It shows that even though some in the French government want to get tough with Muslims and ban the burqa, other parts of the French government continue to give Islam a privileged status.

An ordinary French citizen who has been watching the Islamization of Paris decided that the world needed to see what was happening to his city. He used a hidden camera to start posting videos on YouTube. His life has been threatened and so he uses the alias of “Maxime Lepante. ”

Lepante’s View

His camera shows that Muslims “are blocking the streets with barriers. They are praying on the ground. And the inhabitants of this district cannot leave their homes, nor go into their homes during those prayers.”

“The Muslims taking over those streets do not have any authorization. They do not go to the police headquarters, so it’s completely illegal,” he says.

The Muslims in the street have been granted unofficial rights that no Christian group is likely to get under France’s Laicite’, or secularism law.

“It says people have the right to share any belief they want, any religion,” Lepante explained. “But they have to practice at home or in the mosque, synagogues, churches and so on.”

Some say Muslims must pray in the street because they need a larger mosque. But Lepante has observed cars coming from other parts of Paris, and he believes it is a weekly display of growing Muslim power.Muslim_2

“They are coming there to show that they can take over some French streets to show that they can conquer a part of the French territory,” he said.

France’s Islamic Future?

If France faces an Islamic future, a Russian author has already written about it. The novel is called “The Mosque of Notre Dame, 2048,” a bestseller in Russia, not in France.

French publisher Jean Robin said the French media ignored the book because it was politically incorrect.

“Islam is seen as the religion of the poor people, so you can’t say to the poor people, ‘You’re wrong,’ otherwise, you’re a fascist,” Robin explained.

The book lays out a dark future when France has become a Muslim nation, and the famous cathedral has been turned into a mosque.

Whether that plot is farfetched depends on whom you ask. Muslims are said to be no more than 10 percent of the French population, although no one knows for sure because French law prohibits population counts by religion.

But the Muslim birthrate is significantly higher than for the native French. Some Muslim men practice polygamy, with each extra wife having children and collecting a welfare check.

“The problem of Islam is more than a problem of numbers,” said French philosopher Radu Stoenescu, an Islamic expert who debates Muslim leaders on French TV. “The problem is one of principles. It’s an open question. Is Islam an ideology or just a creed?”

“It doesn’t matter how many there are,” he aded. “The problem is the people who follow Islam; they’re somehow in a political party, which has a political agenda, which means basically implementing Sharia and building an Islamic state.”

In Denial or Fed Up

From the 1980s until recently, criticizing or opposing Islam was considered a social taboo, and so the government and media effectively helped Islam spread throughout France.

“We were expecting Islam to adapt to France and it is France adapting to Islam,” Robin said.

About the burqa controversy, one French Muslim man told a reporter that Europeans should respect Muslim dress. One Parisian woman wearing a headscarf said “the veil is in the Koran” and “we only submit to God and nobody else.”

But even if many government elites are in France are in denial over Islam, the people in the streets increasingly are not. Some have become fed up with what they see as the growing Islamization of France.

They’ve started staging pork and wine “aperitifs,” or cocktail parties in the street. They’re patriotic demonstrations meant to strike back against Islam. Another national demonstration is planned for Saturday, Sept. 4.

A Warning to the West

The French parliament debated the burqa law in this year. Jean-Francois Cope, president of the Union for a Popular Movement political party, has a warning for the West and for America.

“We cannot accept the development of such practice because it’s not compatible with the life in a modern society, you see,” he said. “And this question is not only a French question. You will all have to face this challenge. ”

For more insight on the slide toward a post-Christian Western society, check out Dale Hurd’s blog Hurd on the Web.

For more insight on ‘Islamization’ around the world, check out Stakelbeck on Terror.

Reprinted from CBN.com

By Dale Hurd, CBN News Sr. Reporter

Filed Under: All Stories, Foreign, Religion

Our Children Forced into Islam?

March 21, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

Islam is self-proclaimed to be “the religion of peace,” and in our uncompromising quest for political correctness we deny ourselves the merest observation that “they” may be different from “us” in any measurable respect. Indeed, as Muslims walk the streets of western countries they do so in relative equality, and to the extent they are polite and attempt to blend with the local populations, they are welcomed as fellow citizens of the world, and extended the hand of brotherhood.

Each of us is free (as of this writing) to see the world from his own view, and we would hope that true bigotry, religious or otherwise, would not be condoned in any civilized society. However, there is a growing elephant in the room, and at some point one of us is going to have to point it out and we will all have to discuss it.

The Federalist Press editors enjoy many connections with friends and associates in Europe, and for years have listened with growing concern as anecdotal stories of increasing troubles with Muslim immigrants have been shared. Political correctness has run completely amok in Europe, and leftist governments and their state controlled media are loathe to admit that Muslim immigrants have gotten the best of them.

Indeed, as Muslim populations swell in Western countries we find certain patterns emerging—patterns which we are beginning to see in the Western hemisphere as well.

As the emphasis on marriage and the traditional family in Western countries has diminished, and the practice of abortion has increased, native local populations have sputtered.

Few seem to understand that the Fertility Rate (FR) of most of Western Europe has fallen below 2.11—the point of sustainability. A rate of 1.8 is considered extremely difficult to recover from, and 1.3 is nearly impossible. At this rate a culture will simply fade to oblivion. As of 2008 these are the Fertility Rates of a few European nations: France-1.8; England-1.6; Greece-1.3; Germany-1.3; Italy-1.2; and Spain-1.1. The average FR in 31 European Union countries is 1.38.

So why is the population of Europe growing so rapidly? Muslim immigration, and Muslim Fertility Rates.

For example, France’s FR of 1.8 is offset by the Muslim FR of 8.1. In fact, the south of France now has more Islamic Mosques than Christian churches. Also, 30% of its children under the age of 21 are Muslims, and the number climbs to 45% in large cities. At these rates, France will be an Islamic Republic within a generation.

In the Netherlands 50% of all newborns are Muslim, and in 10 years the population will approach 50% Muslim. These numbers hold true in Belgium as well.

England, where Muslim men were just discovered to be running sex slavery rings of local white girls, has seen a 30-fold increase in its Muslim population since 1970, and now has over 1,000 mosques.

There is a pattern to Muslim immigration into western countries. First, we see a wholesale drain on social services. In some publicized cases we find Muslim men collecting over $15,000 monthly from state welfare systems, receiving per capita stipends for each of their many children and wives (yes, wives). The social welfare systems of most chic EU members are depleted as a result, adding to the already heavily strained budgets that must pay out large pensions and benefits to union members who retired at young ages.

Then, these “peaceful” Islamic adherents tend to become more demanding and violent as their percentage of population grows in these countries, and leaders and agitators begin to demand “religious rights” (extended privileges and Sharia Law) for Muslims, occupying the streets or rioting and burning in protest.

Are western alarmists the only ones who see an imminent takeover of the West?

“There are signs that Allah will grant victory to Islam in Europe without swords, without guns, without conquest. We don’t need terrorists, we don’t need homicide bombers. The fifty-plus million Muslims there will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades.” Muammar Gaddafi.

Perhaps Americans can afford complacency, many seem to believe. In fact, Canada, with its FR of 1.6, has had an increase in its population of over 2,000,000 in this past decade. How is that possible? Muslim immigration and FR.

What is America’s FR? It is down to a nearly unrecoverable 1.6. However, with the rapid Latino influx, our combined FR is 2.11—the bare minimum required to sustain a population, albeit a changing one. How about America’s Muslim population, you ask? In 1970 it was 100,000. Since then, it is difficult to tell, because the government doesn’t track them very closely (it’s not PC), but they tell us it is somewhere between a few million and 9,000,000.

Muslims are indeed beginning to become extremely vocal about demanding their “religious rights” in America. Demands for Sharia Law and examples of honor killings are springing up all around us. Liberal PC is enabling the behavior. We have witnessed that if Bill O’Reilly merely mentions on The View that it was Muslims who attacked Americans on 9/11 there is an orchestrated and exaggerated protest exodus of the hosts to enforce their PC speech limits—thus ensuring that no practical discussion occurs about safety or self-preservation.

With the rise of militant Islam in the West, it is time for a serious discussion on the direction we want our nations to take. If we do not make some tough, non-PC decisions soon, our granddaughters will be wearing burkas and will be stoned to death in the streets for whispering the name of Jesus. The current talk of gay marriage will be reduced to public beheadings for homosexuality. This is not speculation, but a mathematical certainty. If we continue at the current rate, Muslims will become the majority populations in all Western countries, and guess how they’ll vote. Violence that invariably attends Islam will be widespread, filling our streets, just as it does every day in countries with majority Muslim populations.

Of course, the liberal sophist will scoff publically at such an assertion; but one day in the streets of a majority Muslim population is all the proof needed to support it.

To those truly peace loving practitioners of Islam who live among us, and who refuse to follow their Eastern leaders into paths of Jihad, Dar-es-Salaam, Sharia, and cleansing violence, we encircle you in arms of brotherhood and welcome you as fellow-citizens. But we are at the point where we need to receive extremely clear declarations of peace and non-violence from any Muslim that seeks a place among us. To blindly pretend that a rogue elephant is not standing in the middle of the room is a foolish and dangerous path.

PUBLIUS

Filed Under: All Stories, Elections, Foreign, Religion

Iran’s Leader Threatens to Level Cities if Israel Attacks

March 21, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

iranIran’s leader said in a speech that the country would annihilate the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa if it were attacked by Israel, and criticized the U.S. over nuclear talks.

The Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say on all key decisions in Iran, says Israel is too small to be called an enemy, and that the United States is the “center of animosity” toward the Islamic republic.

“Sometimes, leaders of the Zionist regime threaten us. They threaten to take military action. They are not in the size to be put in the list of Iranian nation’s enemies,” Khamenei said in comments broadcast live on state TV.

In a strong warning to Israel, Khamenei said that if Israel attacked Iran, the “Islamic Republic will raze Tel Aviv and Haifa to the ground.”

He made the comments on Thursday to a crowd in northeastern Iran on the first day of the new Persian calendar year. His speech in the city of Mashhad was broadcast live on state radio.

Israel, which is believed to have the only nuclear weapons arsenal in the Mideast, has threatened to take military action against Iran if diplomacy fails to stop Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.

Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful.

In the speech, Khamenei said he’s not opposed to direct talks with the U.S. to resolve its nuclear standoff with the West.

But he added that he’s not optimistic that such talks would yield results unless Washington stops imposing sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

“The Americans constantly send messages to us through various ways, saying let’s hold (bilateral) talks on the nuclear issue,” Khamenei said. “I’m not optimistic on these talks. Why? Because our previous experiences show that dialogue, in the logic of American gentlemen … means let’s sit down and talk so that you (Iran) accept our views. This is not dialogue. This is imposition and we won’t give in to it.”

Iran is living under stepped-up Western sanctions that include a total oil embargo and banking restrictions that make it increasingly difficult for Iran’s Asian customers to pay for oil deliveries. Iran’s income from oil and gas exports has dropped by about 50 percent as a result of sanctions.

Khamenei said the U.S. has sent messages to Tehran, sometimes in writing, saying it is willing to hold bilateral talks with Tehran separately from the negotiations Iran is holding with five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany.

“I’m not optimistic about these talks, but I’m not opposed to it either,” he said.

However, Khamenei said the best way to resolve the standoff would be for the West to recognize Iran’s right to enrich uranium and agree to a monitoring process to ensure that it won’t be used for weapons.

“Iran only wants that the world recognize its enrichment right which is its natural right,” he said.

Khamenei said there is no reason why Tehran should trust the U.S. when Washington doesn’t trust Tehran.

“We have repeatedly told you that we are not after nuclear weapons. You say you don’t believe us. Why should we believe you? When you are not ready to accept an honest and logical remark, why should we accept your words that have been disproved many times?” he asked.

Khamenei alleged that the U.S. wants the nuclear issue to remain unresolved so it will continue to have basis for the sanctions, which he said have harmed, but not crippled the Iranian economy.

“Yes, sanctions have had an effect. If they (U.S.) want to be happy, let them be,” he said.

“Our economy suffers from the problem of being dependent on oil,” he said. “We have to distance our economy (from oil dependence).”

Published March 21, 2013 / FoxNews.com / The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Filed Under: All Stories, Foreign, Religion

A Failure to Excommunicate

March 20, 2013 By Editor 22 Comments

Harry-Reid1Reprinted from May 16, 2012. It shouldn’t surprise many people that most members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly referred to as Mormons, are politically conservative. Indeed, LDS Church members believe that the Constitution of the United States is a divinely inspired document, and that adherence to its original meaning constitutes living according to God’s will. Church members adhere to a strict code of morality, which includes not just matters of sex outside of marriage, but extends to personal areas such as how they dress in public, what they view, and even what they ingest into their bodies.

Much whispering behind the scenes has been accumulating because GOP Presidential Nominee Mitt Romney is not only a high profile Mormon, but a very dedicated member and leader of the church. While Romney endures off-mic rumor and innuendo for his membership in the LDS Church, the arguably second most powerful politician in the nation, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, receives not an utterance about his lifelong membership in the same church.

What is the difference between Mitt Romney and Harry Reid? Politically speaking, the two couldn’t be further apart on almost every issue. On religious and moral issues, however, some might suggest they are kindred spirits—not most LDS Church members, but others might.

In fact, much of what Harry Reid espouses in his public life is repugnant to LDS-Christian doctrine. High taxes, exorbitant debt, burdensome governmental intrusion and regulation into the lives of citizens, socialistic schemes, anti-family policies, welfare dependence, the funding of anti-Christian arts, organizations and lifestyles are only the tip of a burgeoning and murky iceberg that is growing exponentially beneath the waters of American society under the leadership of Reid and his hard left associates.

harry_reidSo how does Harry Reid justify his political views and his divergence from the basic tenets of Mormonism? “I don’t believe in abortion,” is his explanation.

That’s it? He doesn’t support abortion in his political life?

I disagree that Harry Reid’s stated opposition to abortion is enough to save him (in a secular or religious way). Like congressmen who attach their pork barrel projects to bills they know will pass without their votes then quietly vote against them so they can claim fiscal responsibility while collecting campaign contributions for success at “bringing home the bacon,” Harry Reid is only fooling himself that he is a good LDS Church member.

There is a reason that most LDS Church members are conservative. It is a question of morality and personal liberty for them. Harry Reid has supported every anti-American, anti-family, anti-decency piece of legislation that has come down the pike. He is responsible for nearly every dollar of the $15.7 trillion debt—and in case he doesn’t understand it, debt robs liberty and creates poverty. Although he personally votes against direct abortion legislation, he supports candidates and elected officials whom he knows will support it—and that’s supporting it.

So what is the real difference between Mitt Romney and Harry Reid regarding their membership in the LDS Church? On the surface, anyway, the difference is that Romney reflects his religious values in his policies while Reid utterly tramples them in his.

For Harry Reid, and all of those who make a pretense of following Judeo-Christian principles while leading our nation, and indeed, the Western world down a path of fiscal and moral destruction, let me share a scripture that you might recognize, and find helpful in your future career.

“I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot: I would you were cold or hot. So then because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth.” Revelation 3:15-16.

PUBLIUS

Filed Under: All Stories, Economy, Elections, Entitlement, Ethics, Religion

Egyptian Christians Describe Torture at the Hands of Libyan Captors

March 15, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

A group of Egyptian Christians who were detained in Libya where they had gone for work say they were tortured to the point they wanted to die.

coptsThe Copts, who were swept up last month in a raid on a Benghazi market and held on charges of proselytizing because they had Christian symbols on their stalls, told MidEast Christian News the para-police organization the Ansar el-Sharia forced them to make pro-Islam declarations and insult the late Coptic Pope Shenouda.  The claims came a day after another Copt arrested in the roundup was buried after dying while in Libyan custody. His family says he was tortured, as well.

“I will never forget the torture my colleague, Matta Younan, suffered when he refused to say ‘Pope Shenouda was despicable,’” said Amgad Makar Zaki, 26, who had worked in Libya since 2003. The group of as many as 100 immigrants from neighboring Egypt was held for nearly a month before being deported back home.
Younan’s life was threatened and he was beaten over the head with a stick until a police officer told the torturers to stop.

“From time to time, an Islamic preacher came to tell us about Islam and question our Christian faith and the Bible,” added Zaki. “We constantly heard them shouting ‘Obama, Obama, all of us are Osama’, in reference to al-Qaeda’s late leader Osama bin Laden.”

Zaki told the news service the Libyan Islamists arrested the priest of a Benghazi Christian church, shaving his mustache and torturing him.

Copts, who make up as much as 10 percent of Egypt’s population, have demonstrated against the Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohamed Morsi, saying it did little diplomatically to protect the rights of its Christian citizens who were working in Libya.

“I was deeply affected by the position of the Egyptian embassy,” said Zaki. “Some of us contacted the Egyptian ambassador to intervene and he said he could not do anything.”

Sherif Tawwab Nabil, a 15-year-old student, said his father went to work in Libya so he could provide for his family. The son relayed that while his father was selling clothes on a table in one of the markets in Benghazi, dozens of bearded men attacked the area and arrested Christians after checking their right hands for customary tattoos of the cross.

Atef Nadi Habib, a 33-year-old vendor from Minya, said Copts in Libya face violent oppression never seen during the reign of strongman Col. Muammar Qaddafi, who was ousted in a U.S.-backed revolution in 2011.

“I have worked in Libya for 13 years, and I hold a passport, a residence permit and all my documents are legal,” Habib said. “Conditions were stable, but suddenly the situation changed and Copts began to be subjected to constant threats.”

Habib said the tormentors forced the men to strip and repeat the phrase “Allahu Akbar.” He said the captives repeated the phrase ‘because God is great in all religions.’ But when they were ordered to state the two tenets of Islam – There is no god but Allah and Mohammad is His Messenger, they pronounced the first statement only until they were tortured further and relented.

Published March 15, 2013 / FoxNews.com

Filed Under: All Stories, Ethics, Foreign, Religion

State Department Ducks Hearing on American Pastor Imprisoned in Iran

March 15, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

The State Department ducked a hearing Friday that will focus on the case of imprisoned American pastor Saeed Abedini, just days after the leading U.S. representative to the U.N. Human Rights Council declined to specifically address the pastor’s case during a meeting on Iran’s human rights record.

pastor_iranRep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., chairman of the Capitol Hill commission holding the hearing, slammed the Obama administration for turning down the invitation to testify.

“It is amazing,” Wolf told FoxNews.com. “I can’t, almost, believe it.”

The hearing, which began Friday morning, focuses on the plight of religious minorities in Iran. Slated to testify are the group representing the Abedini family in the U.S. as well as Abedini’s wife, Naghmeh.

The Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission reached out to the State Department last Friday in a bid to bring in a State Department witness to speak on the lead-off panel.

A Wolf aide said despite repeated attempts they didn’t hear back from the department until Thursday, when the department said no one was available.

Wolf voiced skepticism at the excuse. “The building is loaded with people,” he said of the State Department.

“The very fact that the United States government is not speaking out sends a very powerful message,” Wolf said.

Abedini converted from Islam to Christianity in 2000 and became a U.S. citizen in 2010 after he married his American wife. The Iranian government does not recognize his American citizenship, though it had enabled him to travel freely between both countries until this past summer, when he was pulled off a bus and placed under house arrest, according to his supporters.

The Obama administration has publicly called for Abedini’s release. But Naghmeh Abedini recently told Fox News that she has not received a phone call from President Obama or the secretary of state.

In prepared testimony for Friday’s hearing, she plans to say she is “disappointed” with the U.S. government.

“I am disappointed that our president and our State Department have not fully engaged this case – disappointed that this great country is not doing more to free my husband, a U.S. citizen. We are both proud to be American citizens. And I expect more from our government,” she plans to say.

Jay Sekulow, chief counsel at the American Center for Law and Justice which represents the family of the pastor, called the State Department’s decision not to attend “extremely troubling and offensive to the many who face life-threatening abuse at the hands of the Iranian government.”

“The State Department’s decision to snub this commission cannot be seen as anything less than a wanton disregard to stand up and speak out for those who cannot,” he said in a statement.

The hearing comes after the U.N. Human Rights Council held a meeting in Geneva on Monday that focused on Iran’s human rights record. At that meeting, the European Union delegation specifically called for the release of “prisoners of conscience,” including Abedini and others.

The U.S. representative, though, did not mention Abedini by name. Ambassador Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe instead broadly criticized “the Iranian government’s ceaseless campaign of abuse” against those who dissent.

“We remind the government of Iran their obligation to allow individuals to exercise their rights to freedom of expression and association and to allow individuals and groups to maintain contact and cooperation with the mandates of this Council,” she said.

She also called the findings of a new report by the Special Rapporteur “serious” and “indicative of an ongoing and intensifying crackdown on human rights defenders and civil society actors.”

That report included a section on the Abedini case.

The State Department, when asked why Donahoe did not herself raise the Abedini case, noted that the U.S. delegation focused on that report, “which details the Iranian government’s ceaseless campaign of abuse against all who criticize or oppose it.”

A State Department official also said that in Geneva, “we made pointed reference to a number of our concerns regarding Iran, along with Syria, China, Cuba and North Korea.”

The official said religious freedom is a “top priority” of the administration, and the “White House and State Department have repeatedly and publicly called for Mr. Abedini’s release.”

“We continue to raise Mr. Abedini’s case with a variety of international actors to help raise awareness of his case and secure his release,” the official said.

But Wolf said the decision “not to even show up” at Friday’s hearing betrays what he described as “an inherent bias in the State Department against people of faith.”

Wolf wanted to hear from Suzan Johnson Cook, ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, or an official in the human rights division. He said he specifically wanted to ask the witness what is being done to secure Abedini’s release.

The Obama administration has addressed his case in the past, when questioned by the press.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said on March 7 that the administration is “deeply concerned that the Iranians have not yet granted access to him by our Swiss protecting power” and continues to believe “he should be released immediately.”

She has previously voiced concern about the fairness and transparency of his trial and claimed the administration is “actively engaged” in the case.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney has said the same, and earlier this year he condemned “Iran’s continued violation of the universal right of freedom or religion.”

Abedini has been held in Iran’s brutal Evin prison since September of last year and was sentenced to eight years in prison in January – accused of evangelizing and threatening national security. The U.N. report said Abedini spent four weeks in solitary confinement and was subjected to tactics like sleep deprivation, after he was arrested in September. The report said he was then transferred to another ward where he was reportedly beaten and initially denied access to medical treatment.

His wife and their two children are in Idaho, though his wife traveled to Washington on Friday for the hearing.

Wolf said he can only assume the State Department’s message to Americans abroad is: “Just don’t get arrested in a foreign country.”

By Judson Berger / Published March 15, 2013 / FoxNews.com

Filed Under: All Stories, Foreign, Religion

ARGENTINE CARDINAL JORGE BERGOGLIO ELECTED POPE, WILL BE KNOWN AS POPE FRANCIS

March 13, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

White smoke billowed from the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel Wednesday, indicating the cardinals have selected a new pope after two days of voting.

pope_francis_firstCardinals have elected a successor to Benedict XVI, who stunned the Catholic world last month by becoming the first pope in 600 years to resign. Crowds packing St. Peter’s Square were seen waving flags and were cheering the announcement as bells were ringing.

Chants of “Long live the pope!” arose from the throngs of faithful, many with tears in their eyes. Crowds went wild as the Vatican and Italian military bands marched through the square and up the steps of the basilica, followed by Swiss Guards in silver helmets and full regalia.

The new pope, who has yet to be identified, became the winner after receiving at least 77 votes, which is more than two thirds of the cardinals.

The new pope is expected to appear on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica within an hour of the vote, after a church official announces “Habemus Papum” — “We have a pope” — and gives the name of the new pontiff in Latin.

Currently inside St. Peter’s Basilica, the elected cardinal will have been asked “Do you accept your canonical election as Supreme Pontiff?”

After giving his approval, the new pope is then asked which name he would like to be called, and other cardinals will approach him to make acts of homage and obedience.

The new pope will also have to be fitted into new robes, and there will be some time taken for prayer and reflection.

Cardinal Protodeacon Jean-Louis Pierre Tauran, of France, will then step out on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica and reveal the pope’s identity to the world.

Elected on the fifth ballot, the new pope was chosen in one of the fastest conclaves in years, remarkable given there was no clear front-runner going into the vote and that the church had been in turmoil following the upheaval unleashed by Pope Benedict XVI’s surprise resignation.

The conclave also played out against revelations of mismanagement, petty bickering, infighting and corruption in the Holy See bureaucracy. Those revelations, exposed by the leaks of papal documents last year, had divided the College of Cardinals into camps seeking a radical reform of the Holy See’s governance and those defending the status quo.

The names mentioned most often as “papabile” — a cardinal who has the stuff of a pope — include Cardinal Angelo Scola, the archbishop of Milan, an intellect in the vein of Benedict but with a more outgoing personality, and Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the Canadian head of the Vatican’s important bishops’ office who is also scholarly but reserved like Benedict.

Brazilian Cardinal Odilo Scherer is liked by the Vatican bureaucracy but not by all of his countrymen. And Cardinal Peter Erdo of Hungary has the backing of European cardinals who have twice elected him as head of the European bishops’ conference.

On the more pastoral side is Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, the favorite of the Italian press, and Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the back-slapping, outgoing archbishop of New York who has admitted himself that his Italian is pretty bad — a drawback for a job that is conducted almost exclusively in the language.

For comparison’s sake, cardinals elected Benedict XVI on the fourth ballot in 2005 — but he was the clear front-runner going into the vote. Pope John Paul II was elected on the eighth ballot in 1978 to become the first non-Italian pope in 455 years.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi said it was a “good hypothesis” that the new pope would be installed next Tuesday, on the feast of St. Joseph, patron saint of the universal church. The installation Mass is attended by heads of state from around the world, requiring at least a few days’ notice.

Benedict XVI would not attend, he said.

Thousands of people braved a chilly rain on Wednesday morning to watch the 6-foot-high copper chimney on the chapel roof for the smoke signals telling them whether the cardinals had settled on a choice. Nuns recited the rosary, while children splashed in puddles.

The Vatican on Wednesday divulged the secret recipe used: potassium perchlorate, anthracene, which is a derivative of coal tar, and sulfur for the black smoke; potassium chlorate, lactose and a pine resin for the white smoke.

The chemicals were contained in five units of a cartridge that is placed inside the stove of the Sistine Chapel. When activated, the five blocks ignite one after another for about a minute apiece, creating the steady stream of smoke that accompanies the natural smoke from the burned ballot papers.

Despite the great plumes of white and black smoke that poured out of the chimney, neither the Sistine frescoes nor the cardinals inside the chapel suffered any smoke damage, Lombardi said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Filed Under: All Stories, Foreign, Religion

Iran Puts Five Christians on Trial for Their Faith

March 11, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

Five Iranian Christian converts who were detained late last year will reportedly begin trial in Iran’s Revolutionary Court this week, according to a human rights group following the case.

Iran_ChristiansThe five men were among seven arrested in October when security forces raided an underground house church in the city of Shiraz during a prayer session. They will be tried at the Revolutionary Court in Shiraz’s Fars Province on charges of disturbing public order, evangelizing, threatening national security and engaging in Internet activity that threatens the government, according to Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a religious persecution watchdog group.

“Judging from recent cases, it is likely that, at the very least, those detained may face lengthy prison sentences,” said CSW spokesperson Kiri Kankhwende.

According to Kankhwende, the crackdown against Christian converts and house churches parallels a general increase in repression against many, including journalists, religious and cultural minorities and others as the government is leading up to June’s presidential elections.

The five imprisoned men, Mohammad Roghangir, Surush Saraie, Eskandar Rezaie, Shahin Lahooti and Massoud Rezaie are members of the Church of Iran denomination, one of the country’s largest house church movements.

“There has been a noticeable increase in the harassment, arrests, trials and imprisonments of converts to Christianity, particularly since the beginning of 2012,” Kankhwende said. “Any movement that differs from or offers an alternative to orthodox Shia Islam, and any persons who chooses to follow an alternative belief system, are interpreted as a challenge to the very state itself.”

The underground church network has been rapidly growing in Iran as a place where converts from Islam to Christianity can pray as they are forbidden to attend services at formal churches.

Alongside the growing network of home churches has been the increase in violent crackdowns and raids on these communities and arrests made on Christian converts, among them the internationalized case of Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, held for almost three years on charges of apostasy and more recently American Pastor Saeed Abedini who is currently serving an eight-year sentence for evangelizing and threatening national security.

“House churches are growing because the converts have nowhere else to go,” said Tiffany Barrans, international legal director at the American Center for Law and Justice,

“When you’re a convert to Christianity in Iran, you can’t go worship at the church on the corner, because conversion is not acceptable. If they were allowed to go to an official place of worship, there wouldn’t be a house church movement,” Barrans said.

“Essentially they have created the house church problem and now use it to persecute its own people.”

Barrans and the ACLJ are also the U.S.-based family attorneys for Pastor Saeed Abedini,  held in Iran’s notoriously brutal Evin prison since September 2012 as his wife and two young children fear for him at their home in Idaho.

More than a decade ago, Abedini worked as a Christian leader and community organizer developing Iran’s underground home church communities for Christian converts who are forbidden from praying in public churches. He was arrested in 2005, but released after pledging never to evangelize in Iran again. When he left his wife and two kids in Idaho last summer to return to Iran to help build a state-run, secular orphanage, Iranian police pulled him off a bus and imprisoned him.

After months of imprisonment without any notice of charges, Abedini was sentenced at the beginning of this year to eight years in prison, as his family and attorneys continue to pressure the State Department and other public and private groups to facilitate his release.

Under Shariah, or Islamic law, a Muslim who converts to Christianity is on a par with someone waging war against Islam. Death sentences for such individuals are prescribed by fatwas, or legal decrees, and reinforced by Iran’s Constitution, which allows judges to rely on fatwas for determining charges and sentencing on crimes not addressed in the Iranian penal code.

All religious minorities in Iran, including Bahais, Zoroastrians, Jews and Christians, have faced various forms of persecution and political and social marginalization throughout the regime’s 30-year reign. But the government saves its harshest retribution for those who have abandoned Islam.

By Lisa Daftari / Published March 11, 2013 / FoxNews.com

Filed Under: All Stories, Ethics, Foreign, Religion

Hundreds of Christians Clash with Pakistani Police after Homes Burned by Muslim Mob

March 10, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

LAHORE, Pakistan –  Hundreds of Christians protesting the burning of their homes by a Muslim mob over alleged blasphemous remarks made against the Islam’s Prophet Muhammad clashed with police on Sunday in eastern and southern Pakistan.

Around 150 people have been arrested for setting dozens of Christian houses on fire in the eastern city of Lahore after a non-Muslim was accused of making offensive comments about the prophet, police said.

PakistanChristians across the country rallied against the incident, but the main demonstrations were in Lahore, the southern port city of Karachi, the capital, Islamabad, and the adjoining city of Rawalpindi.

The Christian demonstrators blocked a main highway in Lahore and police fired tear gas shells to disperse the protesters who demanded assistance from the government, said police official Malik Awais. He said the protesters damaged several vehicles, uprooted a fence along the road and burned an electricity generator.

Seven policemen were injured when the protesters pelted them with stones, he said. He said the police, who used tear gas and batons to disperse the crowd, detained six of the protesters.

Government spokesman Pervaiz Rasheed promised the government would help hem rebuild their houses, but the Christians expressed dissatisfaction with the way the government was handling the incident.

“I have been robbed of all of my life’s savings,” Yousuf Masih said, standing close to his burned house. He said the government’s announcement that it would give 200,000 rupees ($2,000) compensation to each family was a joke.

Awais, the police officer said, the protesters demanded the government raise the compensation amount from 200,000 rupees ($2,000) to 1 million rupees ($10,000).

In Karachi, more than 1,000 protesters blocked a road in a main market and damaged about 25 vehicles, said police officer Ali Raza. He said some of the protesters also attacked 10 shops and looted valuables and cash. He said the police beat back the protesters and fired tear gas shells to disperse them. At least two protesters were taken into custody, he said.

The protests are a response to an incident that began on Friday after a Muslim accused a Christian man of blasphemy — an offense that in Pakistan is punished by life in prison or death. On Saturday, a mob of angry Muslims rampaged through the Christian neighborhood in Lahore, burning about 170 houses.

The Christian man is in police custody pending an investigation into the allegations. Those who rioted are being investigated for alleged arson, robbery, theft, and terrorism, said police officer Abdur Rehman.

The Pakistani police usually arrest rioters to tamp down public anger, but those accused are rarely convicted and the law is often misused to settle personal disputes and rivalries.

Akram Gill, a local bishop in the Lahore Christian community, said the incident had more to do with personal enmity between two men — one Christian and one Muslim — than blasphemy. He said the men got into a brawl after drinking late one night, and in the morning the Muslim man made up the blasphemy story as payback.

Such accusations of blasphemy in the past have prompted huge crowds to take the law into their own hands. Once an accusation is made it’s difficult to get it reversed, partly because law enforcement officials and politicians do not want to be seen as being soft on blasphemers.

According to Human Rights Watch, there are at least 16 people on death row in Pakistan for blasphemy and another 20 are serving life sentences.

Last year, there was a rare reversal of a blasphemy case. A teenage Christian girl with suspected mental disabilities was accused of burning pages of the Quran. But she was later released after a huge domestic and international outcry about her treatment. A local cleric where she lived was arrested and accused of planting the pages in her bag to incriminate her, a rare example of the accuser facing legal consequences. However, he was later freed on bail.

Also on Sunday, a suspected U.S. missile strike killed a foreign militant who was riding on horseback in Datta Khel in North Waziristan, according to three Pakistani intelligence officials who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

Published March 10, 2013 / Associated Press

Filed Under: All Stories, Foreign, Religion

The “Mormon Effect”

February 22, 2013 By Editor 345 Comments

During the 2012 presidential campaign, that awesomely deep well of perpetual wisdom, Alec Baldwin, proclaimed that if Barack Obama were not black, his vote total would have been 20 percent higher.

mormon_templePeople of real intelligence realize that the opposite was probably true: if he had been white, his vote total would have been 20 percent lower. The African-American voting bloc combined with enough whites suffering from liberal guilt guaranteed a higher vote total for Obama.

The truth of the matter is, if Mitt Romney had not been a Mormon, his vote total might very well have been significantly higher.
In fact, according to a Gallop poll released in June of last year, while 4 percent of people said they would not vote for a black president, a full 22 percent said they would not vote for a Mormon. In fact, only atheists and gays ranked higher.

So Baldwin probably had it backwards, which he usually does, so that comes as no surprise.

What did come as a surprise to me is why people would have such negative views of Mormons. I have known lots of them in my life, and in most cases they have been hard-working, kind, generous family-oriented people—just the kind of people this country used to value (and maybe that’s the problem right there.)

Mormons have intrigued me ever since Mike Huckabee back in 2007 claimed that Mormons believe that Jesus and Satan are brothers. With the recent election over, I decided to check out Mormons a bit more.

My hope in doing this was to explain to readers who Mormons are and whether or not 22 percent of the people were justified in opposing having a Mormon president.

But instead I’m going to share an intriguing bit of Mormon theology I learned that I think makes them perhaps the most politically wise human beings on the planet. Ironically, this story stems from that Huckabee quote about the relationship between Jesus and the devil, but the lesson to be learned is one that, regardless of our political or religious views, we would all be wise to consider.

So here’s what I learned: Mormons, unlike most other Christian sects, believe that all humans lived a life before mortality. They call this the pre-existence or pre-earth life. At birth a veil is placed over our minds so that we don’t remember it (you’ll see why in a minute).

In this pre-earth life, we were all in the presence of God as His spirit children. Jesus was there—the first-born of God’s spirit children, and a leader in the councils in Heaven. Lucifer was also there, and was another leader among the children of God. He was called a “son of the morning.”

At some point in this existence, the Father called all of His children together to explain how things worked. All of His children would have to leave His presence and come to earth for a period of testing. The goal was to see if we would live a righteous life even when we had to live by faith, as we would no longer be able to remember God or heaven (that’s the reason for the veil).

If we would live a righteous life, we would be given the opportunity to return and live with God forever. Otherwise we would forfeit that chance, because no unclean thing can live in God’s presence. However, God knew that we would all make mistakes, so he would provide a Savior for the world. This Savior would live a sinless life, and because of that, he would qualify to pay for the sins of the world through what would be called the “Atonement.” If people would sincerely repent of their sins, then the Atonement would essentially erase their sins, and they could still return and live with God. The Father called for volunteers to be this savior, and two stepped forward: Jesus and Lucifer.

mormon_conferenceLucifer said that he would be the savior and he would force everybody to live righteously, thus guaranteeing that all of God’s spirit children would return to Him in heaven [and he, Lucifer would receive all the credit/glory]. Jesus said that He would follow the Father’s plan and allow God’s children their free agency [and all the glory would go to God]. They could choose for themselves whether to live righteously and take advantage of the Atonement or whether to live in sin and forfeit the opportunity to return and live with God.

God rejected Lucifer’s plan, causing Lucifer to rebel and declare war on God. One-third of God’s spirit children joined Lucifer in this rebellion. In the end, the rebellion failed and Lucifer and his followers were cast out of heaven. They came to earth without bodies and now, continuing the war they started in heaven, they tempt men to do evil to one another and lose out on the chance to return to God. [Luke 10:18; Revelation 12:9; Isaiah 14:12]

PAY ATTENTION HERE; THIS IS THE GOOD PART

Now, any traditional Christians reading this will see similarities to their own belief system. Most traditional Christians believe that Lucifer lived in heaven as an angel, but then declared war on God and was cast out. However, the causes for that war are not necessarily clear in traditional Christian theology.

That is where Mormon theology is so intriguing. For Mormons, the greatest of all battles, the war in heaven, was fought over LIBERTY—or as they call it, “free agency.”Lucifer wanted to take it away, while God demanded that humans have it.

Although a Mormon might balk at my making comparisons between their religious beliefs and modern politics (and as I said earlier, every Mormon I’ve ever known was a very good person, so I apologize to any I offend), I see a direct correlation here. For a Mormon, the battle for liberty is not unique to this life; it is the core battle of the ages. Lucifer lost the war in heaven (he really thought he could beat God?), but the war continues on earth. So seeing the government become more and more tyrannical is not just a political concern; it’s a fundamental, eternal concern.

I’m inspired by this Mormon theological idea: God intended for humans to be free to make our own choices and live with the consequences of those choices. The Founding Fathers of this country said essentially the same thing in the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evidence, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

My study of Mormonism has not only given me newfound respect for this people and their religion; it has also made me evaluate my own attitude towards the liberty that seems to be slipping through all of our fingers. Is this just something that is nice to have, and for which I thank the Founding Fathers? Or is it really something that is endowed by God, and that He expects me to fight for. According to Mormon theology, I already fought for this once. The fact that I’m here says that I was on God’s side in the war in heaven, and fought for liberty.

A Mormon might ask, why should any of us be less willing to fight for it here than we were there?

Reprinted from “SMART MORMONS,” By Mike Jensen, January 22, 2013

Readers of this story also find the following stories interesting:

This Easter Morning, Remember

What ‘NOAH’ Movie Gets Wrong, and Right

Christians: Marked For Extinction?

Harry Reid: Worst Human On Earth

British Court Dismisses Case Against LDS Church President

The Tree of Liberty is Dying—Is Civil War Coming?

Is Obama Targeting LDS Canneries?

Mormons and Progressivism: United Order vs. Socialism

The Spirit of Antichrist Permeates Our Nation

AdvertisementsNoah_Enoch_Flood_Ad2

 Let Scottsdale Multimedia write your book. The nation’s premier ghostwriters.>>

Filed Under: All Stories, Economy, Elections, Entitlement, Ethics, Foreign, Gender, Religion

Mayan Apocalypse On December 21

December 19, 2012 By Editor Leave a Comment

Time is up!

If you’re worried about the end of the world arriving on December 21st, you’re not alone. Indeed, for years doomsday nutjobs have been bilking the gullible and frightening the simpleminded among us with their Mayan Calendar ruse.

On Friday at the precise moment of solstice (4:12 a.m. Mountain Standard Time), the Maya Long Count calendar will click over to read “13.0.0.0.0,” (pronounced “thirteen b’aktun”) for the first time in 5,125 years.  The 5,125 year cycle was significant for the Mayans, who were obsessed with numerology and the measurement of time.  Mayan priestly “day-keepers” built shorter calendar cycles into a Long Count, or 5,125-year period of time, which they projected backward to begin on August 11, 3114 B.C., the Mayan day of creation of the earth, and forward to the end of the world on December 21, 2012.

So what is the significance of the end of the Long Count calendar?

None, for us.

Are the Mayans worried? In fact, the Mayan empire, which created the end of the world myth, met its doom over a thousand years ago.  If they were good at predicting the end of something, why didn’t they predict that?

December 22 will arrive in good order; take our word for it. Don’t do anything stupid in the false belief that the world will end on the 21st. If you feel compelled to give away all of your belongings because you don’t think they’ll go with you when you beam up to the mothership, please send cash, stocks, bonds, and bullion to The Federalist Press.

PUBLIUS

 

Filed Under: All Stories, Religion

A Dark Spirit Broods Over Our Nation

December 14, 2012 By Editor Leave a Comment

school_shootingA few days ago a young Hispanic man from Portland, Oregon stole a semi-automatic rifle and went into a suburban shopping mall to kill as many people as he could. Coward.

Every few weeks or months a similar case occurs, with a psycho nobody who wants to become somebody, if only posthumously, who takes an armload of ammo into a public place where firearms are forbidden, and shoots as many of the innocent and defenseless as he can find. Coward.

Unfolding at this very minute is a similar incident, and authorities are reporting that at least 26 people, including 18 children, were killed this morning when a gunman opened fire inside a Connecticut elementary school.

America had gone from a nation of good people living under a Christian brotherly creed, to a nation of self-absorbed, self-centered, pleasure-seeking, thrill-seeking, lazy, indulgent, indolent slobs.

Our streets and homes are filled with people who care about no one and nothing but themselves, and they don’t care what their own foolishness or indolence costs those around them.  Gimme, gimme, gimme is their creed, and they’ve elected a president who has successfully tapped into that weakness.

Illegal drugs have gripped our nation’s youth for decades, and turned our streets and minority neighborhoods into war zones. Immorality and infidelity has overtaken our national belief in a Creator, and His eminence in our culture and lives. Yet we are told that we must accept the different lifestyle choices of those who are unlike ourselves, and suffer the incursions into our society by the diversity of others.

With much of our nation unemployed due to the policies of those who have fundamentally transformed our country, culture and society, sitting on couches playing video games that promote wandering the streets to murder those they encounter, is it any wonder that we have mindless zombies roaming our streets?

At some point decent, hard-working Americans are going to have to make a choice to take back their streets, take back their lives, and take back their government, and forcefully put down the rebellion of darkness and evil that now overshadows this once-great nation.  For me and mine, that day is today.  We will begin to take our weapons with us, even where the signs tell us they are not welcome.  If we encounter a shooter trying to make a name for himself, we will ensure that he gets no more than a single bullet off before the wrath of the righteous is felt in his bowels.  This is the day we begin to root out this evil.

Are there any decent people left out there?  If so, this would be a good time to speak up.

PUBLIUS

Filed Under: All Stories, Economy, Elections, Ethics, Religion

Should GOP Rethink Abortion Policy?

November 29, 2012 By Editor Leave a Comment

Following one of the worst performances for an American president in this nation’s history, Americans awarded Barack Obama a second term. What was the pitch from the far left that got him re-elected following four years of economic upheaval and government socialization of the medical industry?

The winning formula was 1) convincing voters that an honest business genius who had turned around the failing Olympics and the State of Massachusetts in short terms and had served his fellow humans all his life without fanfare or recognition was a greedy and uncaring monster to be avoided at all costs; 2) that the government should be the only source of one’s hope for prosperity and happiness; and 3) that government supplied birth-control and abortion-on-demand are the only rights worth preserving.

There has been much armchair quarterbacking post-election, and we hear of many in the GOP wringing their hands as they contemplate a strategy to again gain the White House and Senate. Proposals such as caving in on tax increases, ala George “Read My Lips” Bush are bandied about. Or winning strategies like “go along to get along” are being trumpeted by the party’s old guard.

The Federalist Press suggests that the GOP consider adopting a democratic party long-term strategy. Indeed, democrats have exercised control of American government for much of the past 100 years by long-term planning—which became necessary following the beating they took in the Civil War and post-war reconstruction, as republicans freed the slaves and passed and enforced the civil rights amendments.

Democrats have had 4 simple strategies for reacquiring power. 1) Class warfare, promulgated by taxing citizens at different rates—taking from some and giving to others. 2) Spending escalation, making the government the provider of goodies. 3) Create dependent underclass by impoverishing minorities and opening borders, making over ½ of voters dependent on government handouts. 4) Re-educating population through leftist takeover of media and education systems, to believe that socialism is the fairest system of government.

It’s that simple. So, can the GOP learn anything from the left?  Perhaps, but these tactics are naturally repugnant to those who espouse personal liberty, so it is doubtful.

What is in the abortion issue that could help the GOP, if as polls indicate, it is minorities who are voting in extremely high percentages for Democrats? Let’s revisit the founding of the birth control and abortion movement, and see what is behind it.

Planned Parenthood was founded by Margaret Sanger, and like-minded racists, like Dr. S. Adolphus Knopf and Lothrop Stoddard, a Harvard graduate and the author of The Rising Tide of Color against White Supremacy. Margaret Sanger was an ardent proponent of sterilizing those she considered “unfit,” which would be the “salvation of American civilization.” Who was unfit? Those of African descent.

Margaret Sanger and her followers were the regents of Western Eugenics, the practice of improving the human gene pool by eliminating undesirable DNA. She and her associates admired the Aryan dreams of the Nationalist Socialists (Nazis) in Germany, and like their counterparts, thought that exterminating lower life forms (Jews, Blacks) was a service to God and country. For those who might doubt that the founder of Planned Parenthood held these beliefs, please refer to some of her many articles and speeches on the subject such as “Some Moral Aspects of Eugenics” (June 1920), “The Eugenic Conscience” (February 1921), “The purpose of Eugenics” (December 1924), “Birth Control and Positive Eugenics” (July 1925), “Birth Control: The True Eugenics” (August 1928), and many others.

Indeed, as a direct result of the Sanger movement, even today, American black children suffer death by the millions at the hands of abortionists. Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in America, with 78% of their clinics in minority communities. Although blacks make up only 12% of the population, 35% of all the abortions in America are black babies.

So when it comes to the political parties’ struggle for dominance in America, where should the parties come down on the abortion issue? With Democrats clamoring for dependent minority voters, they should be the ones who immediately outlaw the practice of murdering minority babies.  They would have at least 13,000,000 more black voters on the rolls if they had not killed them all.

Where does that leave the GOP on the abortion issue? Should they embrace the practice of killing minority babies to purify the voting gene pool?

That’s right America. This is who we’ve become. Embrace the left.

PUBLIUS

Filed Under: All Stories, Economy, Elections, Entitlement, Ethics, Gender, Religion

‘Islamization’ of Paris – a Warning to the West

November 1, 2012 By Editor Leave a Comment

Friday in Paris. A hidden camera shows streets blocked by huge crowds of Muslim worshippers and enforced by a private security force.

This is all illegal in France: the public worship, the blocked streets, and the private security. But the police have been ordered not to intervene.

It shows that even though some in the French government want to get tough with Muslims and ban the burqa, other parts of the French government continue to give Islam a privileged status.

An ordinary French citizen who has been watching the Islamization of Paris decided that the world needed to see what was happening to his city. He used a hidden camera to start posting videos on YouTube. His life has been threatened and so he uses the alias of “Maxime Lepante. ”

Lepante’s View

His camera shows that Muslims “are blocking the streets with barriers. They are praying on the ground. And the inhabitants of this district cannot leave their homes, nor go into their homes during those prayers.”

“The Muslims taking over those streets do not have any authorization. They do not go to the police headquarters, so it’s completely illegal,” he says.

The Muslims in the street have been granted unofficial rights that no Christian group is likely to get under France’s Laicite’, or secularism law.

“It says people have the right to share any belief they want, any religion,” Lepante explained. “But they have to practice at home or in the mosque, synagogues, churches and so on.”

Some say Muslims must pray in the street because they need a larger mosque. But Lepante has observed cars coming from other parts of Paris, and he believes it is a weekly display of growing Muslim power.

“They are coming there to show that they can take over some French streets to show that they can conquer a part of the French territory,” he said.

France’s Islamic Future?

If France faces an Islamic future, a Russian author has already written about it. The novel is called “The Mosque of Notre Dame, 2048,” a bestseller in Russia, not in France.

French publisher Jean Robin said the French media ignored the book because it was politically incorrect.

“Islam is seen as the religion of the poor people, so you can’t say to the poor people, ‘You’re wrong,’ otherwise, you’re a fascist,” Robin explained.

The book lays out a dark future when France has become a Muslim nation, and the famous cathedral has been turned into a mosque.

Whether that plot is farfetched depends on whom you ask. Muslims are said to be no more than 10 percent of the French population, although no one knows for sure because French law prohibits population counts by religion.

But the Muslim birthrate is significantly higher than for the native French. Some Muslim men practice polygamy, with each extra wife having children and collecting a welfare check.

“The problem of Islam is more than a problem of numbers,” said French philosopher Radu Stoenescu, an Islamic expert who debates Muslim leaders on French TV. “The problem is one of principles. It’s an open question. Is Islam an ideology or just a creed?”

“It doesn’t matter how many there are,” he aded. “The problem is the people who follow Islam; they’re somehow in a political party, which has a political agenda, which means basically implementing Sharia and building an Islamic state.”

In Denial or Fed Up

From the 1980s until recently, criticizing or opposing Islam was considered a social taboo, and so the government and media effectively helped Islam spread throughout France.

“We were expecting Islam to adapt to France and it is France adapting to Islam,” Robin said.

About the burqa controversy, one French Muslim man told a reporter that Europeans should respect Muslim dress. One Parisian woman wearing a headscarf said “the veil is in the Koran” and “we only submit to God and nobody else.”

But even if many government elites are in France are in denial over Islam, the people in the streets increasingly are not. Some have become fed up with what they see as the growing Islamization of France.

They’ve started staging pork and wine “aperitifs,” or cocktail parties in the street. They’re patriotic demonstrations meant to strike back against Islam.  Another national demonstration is planned for Saturday, Sept. 4.

A Warning to the West

The French parliament debated the burqa law in this year. Jean-Francois Cope, president of the Union for a Popular Movement political party, has a warning for the West and for America.

“We cannot accept the development of such practice because it’s not compatible with the life in a modern society, you see,” he said. “And this question is not only a French question. You will all have to face this challenge. ”

For more insight on the slide toward a post-Christian Western society, check out Dale Hurd’s blog Hurd on the Web. 

For more insight on ‘Islamization’ around the world, check out Stakelbeck on Terror.

Reprinted from CBN.com

By Dale Hurd, CBN News Sr. Reporter

Filed Under: All Stories, Economy, Elections, Entitlement, Ethics, Foreign, Gender, Religion

Netanyahu Urges Americans to Vote for Romney

September 17, 2012 By Editor 5 Comments

In an unprecedented direct appeal to US voters on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged American voters to elect a president willing to draw a “red line” with Iran. Everyone with any understanding of the political landscape understands that this is an unmistakeable endorsement of Mitt Romney.

In our article on Saturday, Why Catholics and Jews Should Support Romney (September 15, 2012), we enumerated the many reasons why American Jews and Catholics should reject the blistering rebukes against their religious interests by President Barack Hussein Obama and embrace the GOP candidate, Mitt Romney. It turns out that the Israeli Prime Minister agrees.

Prime Minister Netanyahu bolstered his plea with comparisons of Tehran’s claims that its nuclear program is for peaceful energy purposes to domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh, saying that it would be foolish to believe either one has honorable intentions while stocking up on components for WMDs.

Indeed, President Barack Hussein Obama has entirely ignored the many requests of America’s strongest ally in the Middle East since taking office, and has shown distinct and unmistakable favoritism for Muslims and Islamic extremists in the region. With more than 20 Muslim nations now storming America’s embassies, murdering our diplomats, and violently protesting our presence, many GOP leaders are drawing comparisons between the current administration and the similarly naive and flawed administration of President Jimmy Carter–who was overwhelmingly denied a second term by American voters for very similar reasons.

PUBLIUS

View full video:

 

 

http://www.centurysurvival.com
http://www. getrevolutionready.com

Filed Under: All Stories, Elections, Foreign, Religion

Why Catholics and Jews Should Support Romney

September 15, 2012 By Editor 4 Comments

President Barack Hussein Obama’s open war on Christianity was officially launched less than three months into his presidency on April 15, 2009, when he insisted that the gold “IHS” monograms for the name of Christ be covered up with black painted plywood in Gaston Hall at the Catholic church’s Georgetown University, where he delivered a speech on economics.

Since then Obama and his party have done everything in their power to undermine the Catholic Church’s moral stance on birth control and abortion — attempting to force Catholic institutions and people to accept the administration’s edicts about providing these morally abhorrent services (in the Catholic view) to employees and beneficiaries of their institutions and organizations.

Of course, Barack Obama has always been hostile toward Christianity, and Christian principles, championing anti-Christian causes like gay marriage (although he flipped against it for a few years to get elected, then recently flipped back to rally his base), abortion (which has eliminated tens of millions of American blacks from our population), the poverty and servitude of debt and the government dole, and general principles of immorality (yes, Christianity teaches virtue and honesty). Although he claims to be Christian, when it serves him, his professed brand of “Christianity” is a Black Liberation Theology, which has its roots in Marxism–an anti-Christian philosophy.

Obama has likewise taken draconian stands against one of America’s greatest allies — the State of Israel.  Earlier this week Obama snubbed Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — as he has done before. The president has thrown Israel and the Jewish people under the bus on several occasions during his first term in the White House, siding with Muslims on nearly every international issue — while they protest America and riot in nearly every nation, murder our diplomats, and spit in our face — yet American Jewish people continue to support his presidency.

So what is the appeal of a leftist president to American Jews? On paper, there should be none — Jewish people tend to be much more self-reliant and ambitious than most ethnic or religious minorities, and not a good prospect for the democratic siren’s song of the Rainbow Coalition. However, a quick look at American Jewish voting patterns demonstrate that they have supported every “progressive” candidate since Woodrow Wilson. The probable reason for their leftist bent is their countries of origin. Indeed, most Jewish people originated from socialist countries, and even the State of Israel was established as a socialist nation in its infancy. Add to this their persecuted status when they arrived in America, and the persecuted people outreach programs of the left during the 19th Century, and you end up with left-leaning multi-generational voters.

To a lesser extent, the left gathered American Catholics into their tent in the same way they did Jews and Blacks–all of whom they had persecuted and oppressed during the post-Civil War years (see our article True Champions of American Blacks, May 16, 2012), by first convincing them of their minority or non-normal status, and second, by offering them special protection in exchange for their sovereignty and their votes.

The time has come for Americans of every race and religion to come to the realization that selling their souls to the democratic party in exchange for empty promises has brought them nothing but disdain and reviling. It’s time for American Jews, Blacks, Catholics, Hispanics, Mormons, and every other category of citizen to realize that they are just Americans, without hyphenation or special status. Selling one’s soul to the devil never works out the way he promised.

PUBLIUS

Filed Under: All Stories, Elections, Foreign, Religion

DNC Boos God

September 9, 2012 By Editor 2 Comments

After resounding and widespread criticism for rewriting the Democratic Party platform to eliminate all mentions of God, and Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the White House sent a mandate to DNC leadership to reinsert the terms ASAP.

The Democratic Party, with the president at the helm, is seen by many to have become hostile toward Western religion in general, and Christianity specifically (see our article of May 28, 2012, Obama vs. The Catholic Church).

To help divert attention away from these hostilities, the duty fell to convention chairman, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, to present the proposed amendments to the convention, which proposed the tepid language:

“we need a government that stands up for the hopes, values and interests of working people and gives everyone willing to work hard the chance to make the most of their God-given potential.”

and

“it is and will remain the capital of Israel. The parties have agreed that Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations. It should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths.”

Upon requesting a voice vote on the amendments, Villaraigosa asked for the ayes, followed by the nos, and appeared shocked that the nos outweighed the ayes. He stopped reading the teleprompter at that point, which instructed him to announce that the ayes had won the motion by the required two-thirds majority, and stumbled into a second request for voice votes. Upon receiving a second resounding majority of nos, he asked for yet a third vote.

When the third vote was even louder in its opposition to the amendments, Villaraigosa read the teleprompter and said that in his opinion, two-thirds of the voters had said “aye.”

With this announcement boos and shouting protests erupted in the auditorium, denouncing the amendments to mention God and acknowledge Jerusalem.

PUBLIUS

Watch the video>>

Filed Under: All Stories, Elections, Religion

« Previous Page
Next Page »

Federalist Press Dispatch

Get breaking political news, investigations, and uncensored analysis delivered directly to your inbox.

Please wait...

Thank you for subscribing to the Federalist Press Dispatch.

Byrna Non-lethal Self Protection

Byrna Non-lethal Self Protection

Byrna offers non-lethal self protection at an affordable price. Watch the short video, or click to learn more!

Click to talk with us about writing your book >>

Do you want to write a book? James Thompson is a ghostwriter who writes the books of people just like you.

Brit Axton Mysteries Series

Brit Axton Mysteries Series

Brit Axton Mysteries is a series of young adult adventure novels that lead young Brit Axton and her friends on whirlwind adventures to uncover hidden secrets and long lost treasures.

Get free info to help your life

Get free info to help your life

Simple bite-sized guides for life, money, civics, and more . . . because some stuff school just didn’t cover.

Understanding Cryptocurrency: Essentials for Building Wealth in Digital Currency

Understanding Cryptocurrency: Essentials for Building Wealth in Digital Currency

Understanding Cryptocurrency serves as a definitive guide for novice investors looking to understand the world of cryptocurrency and harness its potential for financial growth and prosperity.

Real Estate Wealth Strategies During High Inflation

Real Estate Wealth Strategies During High Inflation

Real Estate Wealth Strategies During High Inflation is a comprehensive guide on navigating the real estate market, offering strategies and insights for successful investing, during high inflation and interest rates.

Privacy Policy

Terms of Service

Follow us

  • parler
  • welcome-widgets-menus
  • facebook
  • envato

Economy

Federal Agents Raid Ilhan Omar’s Washington Home in Criminal Immigration Investigation

The $224 Happiest Place on Earth: Has Disney Forgotten the American Family?

“O Be Wise”: A Timely Warning Against America’s Costly Gambling Explosion

Elections

Federal Agents Raid Ilhan Omar’s Washington Home in Criminal Immigration Investigation

Does Pres. Trump Plan to Announce That Extraterrestrials Are Visiting Earth Before the Midterm Elections?

From “Buy Greenland” to Permanent U.S. Bases: What Trump Got America in the Arctic Deal

Foreign

The Left’s Favorite Question Is “Who Benefits?” Their Forgotten Question Is “At Whose Expense?”

The Battle for Lindsey Graham’s Senate Seat Begins

The Bloody Record of Socialism: Why America Must Reject the Siren Song of the Radical Left

Crime

Federal Agents Raid Ilhan Omar’s Washington Home in Criminal Immigration Investigation

The Economic Numbers Americans Should See: Income Rises, Poverty & Crime Fall and Job Growth Rebounds

Is Islamic Terror Winning? 25 Years After 9/11: America Must Remember What Happened

Science Tech

From “Buy Greenland” to Permanent U.S. Bases: What Trump Got America in the Arctic Deal

Deeper Dive Into White House UFO Tranche 6. The Files That Deserve Another Look.

The Pentagon Just Dropped UFO Tranche 6 — And a 74-Year-Old Recording May Be the File to Hear First

Reader Responses

  • Linda Livaudais on Trump’s UFO Disclosure Has Changed the Conversation — But Not Yet Answered the Biggest Question
  • T059736 on Trump and Musk Announce Plans to Shut Down USAID
  • C.Josef.D on ‘Pay to Play’ at Clinton Foundation Under Investigation
  • John D Cole on Biden Says ‘You ain’t black’ If You Don’t Vote for Him
  • Ed on U.S. Attorney Huber Moving to Indict Clintons and Others

Copyright © 2026 by Federalist Press · All rights reserved · Website design by RoadRunner CRM · Content Wiriting by GhostWriter · Log in